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January 29, 1997
The network has become the notwork. I'm glad I'm not actually trying to do business on the Internet. I haven't been able to connect since a brief abortive try yesterday morning. When I went to upload my journal entry last night I got busy signal for about an hour and then stopped trying until after midnight. Still busy after midnight. When I got home from the cat shelter this afternoon, I tried again. Still busy. Still busy now (2:10PM EST). Lately when I've been able to connect at all I can't stay connected. Either carrier drops or the dreaded Mac bomb icon appears on my screen. By the time I restart the Mac and redial world, it's either busy or so slow that PPP times out without getting a log in prompt. The future is now. Yup. Right.
Buggs (the smelly one) and Missy and a bunch of kittens have gone to new homes. Someone has applied to adopt Charlie, the shy black one who is afraid of his own shadow. More new ones arrive as fast as the old ones are placed. Sometimes it feels like a treadmill.
Dottie is still pining after Jon. She won't come out of her cage without lots and lots of encouragement. She turns and faces the wall if you try to interact with her.
Custer, the new orange tabby I met last week, scratches incessantly at the walls of his cage then rolls over onto his back and claws at the air. He looks a lot like Wilbur except he has a normal tail and a narrower face. Same vocal patterns as Wilbur except Custer also has a short yelp that sounds like a small dog barking. He has Wilbur's loathing of all things medical so Eileen has a hard time with giving him worm meds and ear mite meds...
Dickie is getting into everything.
Abner has returned from his adoptive home. The humans were allergic to him. Sigh. I think Abner is taking this hard. He started a fight with Jaguar this morning. Jaguar was just peacefully sleeping and Abner went after him.
Juliette didn't get any blood from any of us today, and I stayed far away from Calley as my hand hasn't quite healed from her last intrusion into my personal space...
I was exhausted today because I skipped breakfast - not even coffee- because the Amesbury Dunkin Donuts was so crowded I couldn't even get into the parking lot. I pooped out at noon with a few more dishes left to do because I just had to get something to eat and some coffee. I grabbed a bagel and coffee to eat in the car.
I decided to unwind with a grande latte and Wild America (I'm almost done, they've made it to Alaska...) at Starbucks. I'm sitting there just starting to get relaxed, my latte about half gone, when the fire alarm goes off. The whole building evacuates: the bagel eaters and bakers at Bruegger's, the lycra aerobodies at Silverado, the Starbucks customers and crew, the lawyers downstairs, the italian restaurant upstairs, the sporting goods store... Quite a mob scene on the sidewalk. I thought about asking Andrew to retrieve my coffee but I decided I'd just head home.
So here I am. Busy signal and all. My homework is already done for tonight's class so plenty of time for writing journal entries against the day when I might actually connect to the fabled internet of legend.
A small plane crashed down the street from my house this morning. Pilot and passenger walked away from it. I drove right by the site on my way to litter box land this morning and didn't even notice it. Pilots frequently mess up the approach to that airport. I'm surprised the ice cream place across the street is still standing. I'm equally surprised the gas station on that side of the street is still standing.
This airport is weird because although it is entirely in North Andover it belongs to and is run by the City of Lawrence. Kind of like a Lawrence embassy in the sovereign territory of North Andover.
There's a half decent middle eastern restaurant in the airport terminal where the airport coffee shop used to be. The new place doesn't have the model airplanes hanging from the ceiling or the cool airplane napkin holders but it still has the pilots talking about their planes over early morning coffee.